via The Hollywood Reporter
by Eriq Gardner
Over the last few months, the music industry has been rocked by multiple lawsuits alleging that artists such as Kenny Rogers, Sister Sledge, Rob Zombie and others have been cheated out of substantial money from the improper calculation of revenues from digital music. The plaintiffs in these cases assert that the music giants have been wrongfully treating digital music purchases as “sales” rather than “licenses,” and thus only sharing 10-20 percent of revenue instead of a near 50-50 split they believe is owed.
Let’s assume the plaintiffs are right. What comes next? Do record labels have any way to limit the damage and what kind of money is at stake?
The answer is coming soon. In 2010, in a breakthrough case involving Eminem’s producers, F.B.T. Productions, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals largely blessed the “license” interpretation, remanding the case down to the district court level to figure out what was owed by Aftermath Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group.
Read full story at HollywoodReporter.com
Comments are closed.